Reference: Data Visibility and Confidentiality
All survey responses are confidential to protect employee identity. The available settings and features are in place to treat responses as confidential, while providing the necessary level of insight to analyze survey results.
Data Visibility Settings
Setting | Setting Location | Description |
|---|---|---|
Number of responses
| Controls the required number of responses to display a segment for comparison.
Example: you set Number of responses to 5, and Aggregation period to 1 year. A segment displays data if 5 unique employees answered a survey in the last 1 year. | |
Number of scores per question
| Controls the required number of responses to display a driver or a question for comparison.
Example: you set Number of scores per question to 5, and Aggregation period to 1 year. A driver, or a question displays data if 5 unique employees answered that specific driver or question in the last 1 year. | |
Unique employees across two segments
| Administration
Data Settings
Data
| Accounts for cases of 2 mostly overlapping segments to avoid exposure through comparison.
Example: you have a country manager with an All reports segment containing 49 employees in their reporting line. There's also a Country segment with 50 employees, containing the same group as well as the country manager themselves. If both segments are visible and available for comparison, the confidentiality of the country manager is at risk. If you set this setting to 2, one of the overlapping segments isn't visible, because the number of unique employees between them is less than 2. |
Comment visibility thresholds : Segments
| Controls the required number of responses to display comments in a segment. This setting is the cap for the Number of responses setting, and it works on a per-survey basis.
Example: you set Number of responses to 5, and the Aggregation period to 1 year. A segment displays comments if 5 unique employees answered a survey in the last 1 year. | |
Comment visibility thresholds : Responses
| Controls how many employees must answer the survey in a survey round, to display comments for that specific round. The combination of the 2 settings can alleviate confidentiality risk during periods of lower participation, such as summer holidays.
This setting works on a per-survey basis, and can't be higher than the comment visibility threshold of segments. Example: you set Comment visibility threshold for Segments to 6 and Comment visibility threshold for Responses to 3. Comments are visible if at least 6 employees have answered the survey in the visibility window, of which at least 3 answered that specific survey round. | |
Display settings : Date
| Controls whether the date on each comment is the comment date or end date of the survey round that contained the comment. | |
Display settings : Conversation email content
| Controls whether to display the message, conversation history, and original comment in comment reply emails. When this setting is off, the employee needs to click a link to go to the conversation. We recommend enabling this setting if your organization uses personal dashboards, to encourage employees to view conversations securely in their personal dashboard. | |
Restricting attributes and segments | To restrict an attribute:
Alternatively, to restrict individual segments: | Enables you to restrict attributes and segments, and use access groups to control who can see this data. You can restrict attributes on a dashboard level and an employee record level. Restricting an attribute on employee record level also hides the list of surveyed employees on its dashboard.
Example: you create an editable attribute named Ethnicity, so employees can validate which segment they should be part of during their survey. The aggregate dashboard data should be visible to the Diversity & Inclusion consultant, without seeing the employees who selected each segment. Set the employee record access to No one , and dashboard access to Only those with rights to access restricted segments . |
Access Control Permissions
You can set permissions individually for each access control group.
Permission | Description |
|---|---|
Access list of employees who received the survey
| Controls whether you can display the list of employees that were part of the survey, during the visibility window. |
Access restricted attributes
| Controls whether you can display segments of restricted attributes. |
Access comments
| You can control the types of comments, if any, each access group can view. |
Access comments in real time
| Controls whether comments become visible in real time, or, if disabled, end of round. |
View comment managers
| Controls whether you can display the hierarchical list of managers on a comment. The list only displays managers whose segments have met the visibility requirements. The list adapts based on the context and the manager viewing the comment.
Example: you can't view the segment of a manager due to overlapping segments, so their name isn't visible on comments from their direct reports in your view. The administrator can view the segment of this manager, so when they view the same comments, the manager's name is on the list. |
View comments by segment
| Controls whether you can filter comments by specific segments. If you disable this permission, members of the group can only view comments on their overall dashboard, but not when drilling into subsegments that met the visibility requirements. |
Survey Experience
Survey Experience | Description |
|---|---|
Overall confidentiality | The scores and comments an employee submits are confidential and don't reveal their identity. |
Participation | Survey participation is optional, and the dashboard doesn't reveal which employees actually answered the survey. Employees can also skip questions, and leaving comments is optional. |
Comments | Comments never reveal the identity of the employee. Automatic comment shuffling prevents comments from a single survey submission displaying as a group on a manager dashboard. |
Receiving emails | Employees can unsubscribe from emails by clicking on the link at the bottom of the email. Unsubscribing to 1 email type doesn't opt you out of other email types. Example: if you unsubscribe to the survey email, you can still receive comment conversation or acknowledgment emails. |
Personal dashboard | Employees can only access their scores and comments on their personal dashboard by logging in using the email address on their employee record. |
Emails
Email Type | Confidentiality Features |
|---|---|
Survey email | The survey email contains the name of the employee, however the answers the employee submits won’t display their name. The name is present to indicate that the employee shouldn’t share their survey link with another employee. |
Survey reminders | Because each employee has a unique survey token, they receive reminders if their participation isn't complete. The reminders are automatic, so participation status of each employee remains confidential. |
Comment acknowledgment | You can control which access control groups can acknowledge comments. Employees receive an email with a random delay containing the name of the manager and the acknowledgment. |
Comment reply | You can control which access control groups can reply to comments. Employees receive an email with a random delay containing the name of the manager, the content of the reply and the option to respond. You can remove the comment preview from the email content in Data Settings .
The conversation reply link takes the employee to their personal dashboard, or to a standalone page where they can respond to the reply, if your organization doesn't use personal dashboards. In that case, the link token expires every 24 hours, requiring the employee to manually request a new token which prompts Peakon to send a new email. Responses of the employee remain confidential throughout the process. |